My former grad-school colleague Justin McDaniel recently ran into an interesting bout of media attention and controversy over a course he teaches at Penn, and an Associated Press article written about it. It is a comparative course on monasticism, entitled “Living Deliberately”. Nothing unusual so far; but what makes this course innovative is it contains a practicum. A practicum is relatively standard fare these days for many university courses on meditation, in which students are encouraged to meditate and thereby get a firsthand grasp on the course content. But McDaniel’s course is the first one I’ve heard of in which students attempt to get firsthand experience of being a monk.

What does that mean? As part of the class, students are required to live for various periods of time according to various restrictions, each one followed by an actual monastic order of some tradition or other. No technology beyond electric lights; no reading news from the outside world; no eating after dark; no caffeine or alcohol; no vegetables that grow underground (a nod to Jainism). Breaking the rules requires confession.

Terry Mattingly, editor of religion-journalism blog Get Religion, found the AP article very strange. It “has a gigantic hole: It contains no information whatsoever about the prayer and worship life of these monks.” Mattingly’s claim of a hole, of course, is based on the assumption that monks qua monks must have a “prayer and worship life”. For he claims: “Monks, you see, have to have tradition. Tradition is the frame that surrounds the life of a monk. The goal is to live a tradition and to be transformed by it.” To which the easy reply is: says who?

Mattingly asks, “What is the point of monasticism, if not transcendence, submission and union with Another?” Here he’s already betraying his Christian parochialism; Theravāda Buddhist monasticism has nothing whatsoever to do with “union with Another”, and I doubt that Mattingly would be willing to go so far as to claim that Buddhist bhikkhus are not really monks. (Similar point about his emphasis on “prayer and worship life”: Theravāda monks do have that, but it’s hardly the point; lay Buddhists pray too. Monasticism is about trying to work off bad karma and reach liberation – or more cynically, about following cultural norms so that one can become more marriageable.) But more importantly, the reporter answers Mattingly’s question in the context of the course: “‘It’s not about individual restrictions,’ said McDaniel. ‘It’s about building hyperawareness of yourself and others.'” To which Mattingly replies:

I do not doubt that the story is accurate in conveying that this is the professor’s answer to these crucial questions. However, I find it hard to accept his answer without some kind of information about the spiritual tradition — wither ancient or postmodern — used in this academic exercise. Is there, in fact, a monastic tradition in which increasing one’s knowledge of self and becoming more aware of others are not initial steps to a higher ultimate goal? It would be good to hear the Catholic/Buddhist professor discuss that issue.

Here Mattingly’s question is interesting. For what McDaniel is saying here – and what really makes his class different from Catholic or Buddhist monasticism – is that in his class monasticism is treated as a technique. The reporter mentions that point but doesn’t dwell on it, and the lack of attention to it seems to freak Mattingly out a bit: “This may be one of the strangest religion ghosts I have ever seen in a news story. Ever.” My reaction is rather different: it’s about time!

Few would raise an eyebrow anymore at the now-common practice of having students meditate in a class on meditation traditions – without involving a “prayer and worship life” with those traditions. Meditation, like yoga, is now widely treated as a technique. If one can treat meditation as a technique, then why not monastic asceticism?

A very large number of the Westerners drawn to Buddhism these days are drawn to it because of meditation. S.N. Goenka specifically describes his form of meditation as a technique. But in my own experience with a Goenka meditation retreat, the meditation technique made far less of a difference than the monasticism – the ascetic practices of a sort very similar to those described by McDaniel.

Goenka’s introductory ten-day vipassanā meditation courses, inspired by the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, do not merely require students to sit and meditate. They require a strict, gender-segregated monastic regimen. One does not merely refrain from meat, drugs and sexual intercourse; one is not allowed to read or write, nor to speak except to ask specific questions of practice, and one is expected to wake at 4 am – which, for a graduate student, required more jet lag than a trip across the Atlantic. For me, the meditation was the easy part, and one from which I took relatively little – except for one specific practice at the end of the course, which was not the course’s emphasis. The harder part, which made a much stronger impression, was maintaining the monastic discipline. When I couldn’t get my thoughts out of my head into paper or voice, I thought I’d go crazy – the same thoughts would just circle over and over. It was that monastic discipline, far more than the meditation, that made me acutely aware of my own thoughts and habits.

Much has been made of the MRI studies of the brain of Tibetan Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, showing him to have far more of the brain activity associated with happiness than anyone else in the study, including other meditators. It’s been typically assumed in such discussions that what makes Ricard so happy was his long experience with meditation. But I’ve wondered from the start: couldn’t it be the monasticism? That always seemed to me the more likely candidate: changing your entire lifestyle in a carefully controlled way that turns you away from worldly desires, and thereby getting you away from the suffering caused by craving.

I suspect McDaniel is ahead of the curve in teaching this class. I wouldn’t be surprised if ascetic and monastic disciplines, like meditation and yoga, start being taken up as secular techniques. As far as I can see, just like meditation and yoga, they have real and important practical benefits. That’s very clear to the students lining up to take McDaniel’s course. And contra Mattingly, it’s very hard for me to see anything weird about that.

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33 thoughts on “Monkhood as technique”

This seems like an interesting and provocative class that, based on the article, has very little to do with either Christian or Buddhist monasticism. However, I expect the article doesn’t convey what the students are learning about the view and teachings of these traditions.

It is interesting that your friend views himself as a Buddhist / Christian. There seems to be a small trend toward this, mostly Christians who find some inspiration in Buddhist practices (such as Father Keating and his Centering Prayer movement).

Thats a very interesting development. It cuts across the danger of dualism implicit in the intellectualist approach. What happens to your thought processes when you live that life? If you can’t fix the thought into a form of words does the thought go deeper and go out of existence or become refined?

Really interesting! I suspect you’re right that monastic practice will become a secular technique. It’s obvious that the discipline itself (like waking up at 4am) is supposed to be transformative in some way. I’ve often thought that grad school is a kind of monastic practice – at the very least it involves a vow of poverty!

And if you’re single when you finish grad school, the kind of places you’re likely to end up in can be equivalent to a vow of celibacy.

I observed parallels between academia and monasticism a lot while I was in there. The difference is that monasticism is supposed to aim at a spiritually beneficial self-transformation – becoming a better person. This is not something that I have usually seen academia accomplish.

In my teens, I used to have recurrent thoughts of becoming a “Sannyasi” or monk. But the more monks I met in my youthful “spiritual search” (in India), the more I found the whole monastic thing and its practitioners repulsive on the fairly obvious grounds of pretensions to “holiness” or “wisdom” and hypocrisy. Now, I would say of monks what Prometheus said of the gods in “Prometheus Bound” by Aeschylus: “In simple words, I hate the pack of gods.”

Some of the methods of monasticism are obviously methods of askesis, self-control. Nietzsche, despite his trenchant critique of asceticism, also acknowledged and appreciated this fact.

But it must be a real achievement of self-control, not a delusion of self-control springing from thoughts of “self-mastery” at a weekend retreat or a semester course.

And this self-control is obviously unhealthy if it is purely a matter of the will imposed on and in control of behavior(s).

Such control of behavior purely by will-power and accompanied by vicarious fulfillment of the cravings by means of fantasy is a recipe for mental disorders.

Hence, any real achievement of self-control must also be accompanied by Samata or tranquility and absence of inner conflict and fantasies.

Here, I think, insight is the key. Will-power is important, but it must follow in the wake of insight.

And, as the Tantric traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism suggest, such liberating insight may well occur in the midst of Bhoga or enjoyment and, in fact, be denied to the practitioners of ascetic masochism.

As the examples of masters such as Saraha and Ikkyu show, the insight and the accompanying absence of inner conflict concerning desire are consistent with the enjoyment of the objects of those desires.

This rambling has now led me to these questions:

What is the use of monastic methods if they actually exacerbate inner conflict concerning desires (and it doesn’t matter if it is a desire for coffee or coitus!)?

What is the use of monastic methods if they only end up cultivating will-power at the expense of insight?

What is the use of monastic methods if their results are temporary and do not lead to an enduring or consistent self-mastery?

And, indeed, who has really achieved self-mastery? Is it the monk who restrains his behavior and is inwardly burning with desire and discontent, or a person for whom the desire for coffee or coitus is not a problem, or a source of inner conflict, regardless of whether it is fulfilled or denied?

As I understand it, there are three requirements for effective progress on a path — exertion, insight (or intelligence) and maitri or compassion.

At some advanced stage of the path these three are not really separate things — insight results in compassion — or compassion results from seeing clearly. Similarly, exertion ceases to be an effort to push away from attachment or sin (depending on your tradition) toward virtue and becomes a pull — a source of joy.

In the meanwhile, there is real benefit from cultivating all three of these in what may seem like an artifical way. So, the Buddhists have the practice of aspiration bodhicitta. And all traditions have disciplines that require effort that goes against ingrained habit.

Yes, that’s it! It is the absence of inner conflict over whether one has the desire to fulfill or abstain from fulfilling a desire and over whether the desire is actually fulfilled or denied which is the sign, test, and proof of real self-mastery!

Hi, Warner – good to see you here! Justin mentioned Butler’s post to me earlier and I think it’s good. I aimed to go in a bit of a different direction than she did, but I think the posts are complementary.

1. Talk of “Self-mastery” implies a division between that which is doing the “mastering” or controlling and that which is mastered or controlled.

Who or what is it which is doing the “mastering” or controlling? And what is it which is subject to control or mastery? How are they different?

How do we distinguish, if at all, between the dominatrix and the dominated here? LOL (This allusion to sado-masochism may not be wildly off the mark in the context of monasticism or asceticism!)

2. The ideal of “absence of inner conflict over whether one has the desire to fulfill or abstain from fulfilling a desire and over whether the desire is actually fulfilled or denied” is an alternative to the monastic ideal of “self-mastery” since it is obviously so different from the typical ascetic ideals of suppression of appetite by will-power, self-denial, abnegation of desire, etc.

Hence, the ideal of achieving a state of absence of inner conflict over the fulfillment or lack of fulfillment of a desire is far removed from asceticism or monasticism.

Tolstoy’s short story “Father Sergius” is great one to read in this context.

3. What would be the point of practicing “monastic abstinence” from meat-eating for a semester only to go back to gorging myself with the flesh of murdered animals at the end of it? This sort of thing is just a gimmick.

4. Monastic-style “self-mastery” can cultivate egotism to a much greater degree than indulgence. The subtle pride and egotism of the monastic who thinks that he has achieved “self-mastery”, while you and I, mere worldings, remain the slaves of our desires, is his most formidable obstacle and abject pitfall.

I was interested to read that Prof. Butler adds journalling to the mix. It had occurred to me that there ought to be some way for the student to gauge the usefulness of such practises in a manner which is non-confessional. A 500 word reflection on a randomly allotted work of art prior to and post the exercise to assess if there was any deepening of intuition could be valuable. Just a thought.

Thill:
Asceticism in the pursuit of sporting excellence is normal. If a spiritual director were as abrasive as the average coach there would be an outcry. Are sports people basket cases?

MR:
Asceticism, for some people and in some contexts, may facilitate achievement of excellence, but it is a myth that it is required for creative output.

Consider the prodigious output of some of the great artists who were, to understate the facts, not ascetics and did not practice any form of asceticism even while working on their greatest creative projects. Think of Bach, Gauguin, and Raphael.

Btw, I wonder if the ferocity of some of the “warrior monks” of some traditions of (gentle?) Buddhism is a function of their asceticism. I dare say that nothing can provide fuel for violence better than bottled up sexual energy!

Also, for some interesting reflections on the connections between sexual asceticism and fascism, see Wilhelm Reich’s Mass Psychology of Fascism.

Amod, as you are aware, Wilber has a consideration of meditation “as technique” in Integral Spirituality, and is quite clear about what (in his opinion) it can and cannot accomplish. Pursuant to some of Thill’s points, I might mention specifically that Wilber thinks meditation does not necessarily promote psychic health or even necessarily maturity. It is possible to see, e.g., “anger arising” inside one, and to “not identify with it”, but all the while not take responsibility for it either. In Wilber’s opinion, meditation can even exacerbate the latter tendency. (N.b. he says this as one who has meditated (Vipassana tradition, I think) for decades now.)

More general question: I am in general agreement with your post, so this is not meant to be combative, but what is it that differentiates this emphasis on the sanity of “lifestyle,” so to speak, from the more “anthropological” investigations concerning (say) lentil-sorting that you took a dim view of here?

Moreover, while I understand (I think) and welcome the separation of various “beliefs” from the regime of monasticism, I do think that the “simple living” aspects of monasticism — sleep hygiene, calm, simple diet, voluntary poverty, and so on — seem incomplete without some specific practice either devotional or meditative. And I would love to learn of any historical precedents. I don’t want to insist upon any particular “content” to such a practice, but I have to ask: in the absence of any such, then what is such “monasticism as technique” a technique for?

(Please pardon me if this comes off as tendentious; I write in some haste due to other obligations.)

Thanks, Skholiast. I don’t think you have to worry about combativeness; as far as I can tell, you have significantly fewer combative tendencies than I do.

Re your questions: as far as I know, Vasudha Narayanan never suggested that people who weren’t Indian had anything to gain from counting auspicious lentils, other than an understanding of a different culture. McDaniel’s course is explicitly about something more than that: specifically, he notes, “building a hyperawareness of yourself and others.” The kind of attention, even mindfulness, that is often cited as a benefit to meditation, but which I suspect this rigorous discipline may provide even more fully. That seems like something potentially beneficial to people in many different traditions, including liberal secularism.

And even on Narayanan’s kind of lentil study, the earlier post was not necessarily to say that such study is bad, or useless – merely to note that it does not merit the kind of privileged position that people like Narayanan assume for it, certainly not on the kind of majoritarian populist grounds they advocate.

Thill:
When the waters are troubled by spiritual exercise mud is also raised. If we had been content to leave well enough alone then the various conflicts and true motivations of our deeper mind/unconscious would not be brought to the surface. Somnambulism is a sort of life that obviates the challenges of the waking state. The students in the proposed exercise may well come to feel the panic that is kept at bay by the multitudinous distractions of their everyday life. Freud’s concept of sublimation may be apposite here. The energy that is released is channelled into positive cultural achievements. Sublimation is achieved by heating and allowing to condense in a purer form. ‘Tapas’/tapasya (asceticism), as you know means heat.

MR: “When the waters are troubled by spiritual exercise mud is also raised.”

This so-called “spiritual exercise” is the real culprit in the masochism of self-created inner conflicts, in varying degrees of intensity, we human beings seem to like to wallow in.

I think the maverick U.G. Krishnamurti was on target when he told me that these “spiritual exercises”, e.g., fasting, sensory deprivation, catatonic or frozen positions or postures, celibacy, etc., only disturb the natural functioning of the body, and, consequently, produce visions and other hallucinations fondly mistaken for insights and “peak experiences”.

Based on my experiences, I strongly suspect that monasticism is a huge and subtle “ego trip”.

Real masters seldom wear the monastic “uniform”. They are content with plain clothes!

I don’t disagree that monasticism (or any other spiritual occupation) can be a huge and subtle ego trip. Why is that a particular problem? If the goal of monasticism is to eliminate self-deception, would you want to prevent self-deceivers from becoming monks? A certain amount of confusion is necessary — or you don’t have a path or a need for the monastery. And, of course, our egos being what they are, we will make an ego trip out of whatever surrounds us — whether that is a university, an investment bank, or a monastery.

The real question is whether the combination of teachings and practices, over time, reduce confusion. The interesting thing is that the critical mind that judges and condemns hypocrisy has within it fundamental intelligence, but intelligence that is in the service of ego. So, there is a necessity to see hypocrisy and not to buy into the deception, but also not to exercise the habit of pushing it away and rejecting it. Seeing and accepting imperfection is quite important. When you realize that you have been arrogant and let that realization that you are far from perfect soften you — that is the essential path.

Do you mean the tendency toward self-deception or particular forms of self-deception?

How do you respond to the argument that since monasticism itself rests on insidious forms of self-deception, e.g., deceiving oneself into thinking that appetites are bad, that appetites can be “overcome”, that, assuming they can be “overcome”, it is necessarily good to “overcome” them, that the proof of whether one has “overcome” them can be determined subjectively in solitude and independently of actually facing the “temptations” in the real world, that one’s appetites and one’s ability to “overcome” them have any intrinsic significance, etc., that it is implausible to think that it can help overcome self-deception?

The whole purpose of monasticism is to eliminate self-deception. I think that this is true of both Christian and Buddhist monasticism. The difference between the two is that Christian monasticism has an intercessionary practice that looks to grace (a kind of quiescence that is attributed to something outside of ourselves). Buddhism views that orientation toward other as an unnecessary fabrication — but Buddhism also looks to something ineffable that is uncreated.

The understanding that self-exception exists (for example, that one has acted as a hypocrite) is a recognition that self-deception is created and that it can be cleared away (because to see self-deception requires that one is fundamentally not deceived). Once you develop an allegience to that original mind that recognizes self-deception, then the issue is what means there are to counter the habits of self-deception.

It is certainly possible to wake up in the middle of a worldly life — with a career and a wife and three kids and cell phones, aging parents and the distractions of modern life. But it is difficult. Celibacy, for example, is not necessarily a rejection of sexual activity (recogizing that it may be in some traditions) — it is a simplification. Without children, there is a simpler life and more time for spiritual practice.

Appetites are problems. But the objects of desire are not problems. The problems with appetites is that they are not really oriented toward their object. Instead, they are rooted in a fundamental dissatisfaction — a hole in life that needs to be filled. That dissatisfaction is dukkha. You can see this in common experience. When we are dissatisfied and cast about for something to fill a void (T.V., what is in the refrigerator, sex), there is a problem with that. On the other hand, if we are simply appreciating something unexpected and beautiful — a Mozart sonata on the radio or raindrops streaming upward on the windshield of a car on the highway — that is not desire (at least not how I would define it).

Monasticism uses various practices to work against habitual tendencies toward sleep — sleep being the mind checking out and running on automatic pilot toward pleasure, away from discomfort or toward a state of anesthetic dullness. That is why monasticism is an orientation toward waking up and away from self-deception. At some point, what is habitually pleasurable shifts. And then there may be a need to work with a fixation or attachment to pleasurable spirtual states. At that point, it may be useful to leave the monastery and work on how your state of mind reacts to a nine to five job, a tired wife and a snotty nosed kid in a batman costume. Or you could stay in the monastery and deal directly with your mind in that situation.

Why is hypocrisy an example of self-deception? A hypocrite may well know that he or she is acting contrary to professed belief. So, hypocrisy doesn’t necessarily involve self-deception.

“Appetites are problems. But the objects of desire are not problems. The problems with appetites is that they are not really oriented toward their object.”

Appetites or desires are appetites or desires FOR the possession and enjoyment of their objects. You cannot have an appetite or desire without thinking of the object of the appetite or desire. The very identification and description of the appetite or desire involves reference to specific object or category of objects.

“Instead, they are rooted in a fundamental dissatisfaction — a hole in life that needs to be filled.”

It is undeniable that dissatisfaction springs from lack of fulfillment of an appetite or desire.

Both satisfaction and dissatisfaction require reference to desires and their objects. In the case of the former, the object of the desire is possessed and enjoyed. In the case of the latter, one fails to possess and enjoy the object of the desire.

Thus, there is no such thing as a state of Dukkha or dissatisfaction prior to and independent of desire.

It seems to me that there are only three ways to deal with dissatisfaction (arising, of course, from the thwarting of a specific desire or appetite): either figure out a way to fulfill the desire (Wilde’s way of getting rid of a temptation by yielding to it) or get rid of the desire, or remain unaffected by the prospect or actuality of not fulfilling the desire.

Assuming that it is feasible to get rid of some desires, I still fail to see the necessary connection between this project of getting rid of some desires and monasticism.

My own ideal, which obviously doesn’t require monasticism, is to remain unaffected by the prospect or actuality of lack of fulfillment of the desire.

But isn’t it natural to feel frustrated when you have an intense desire which cannot be fulfilled?

Of course, but you don’t have to be frustrated about being frustrated! LOL

Dissatisfaction about being in a state of dissatisfaction is the real problem!

I agree with most of what you say. But I think that the principle afflictive emotions (desire, aggression, ignorance) are not as closely tied to their objects as you state.

Anger, for example, tends to arise as a generalized sense of irritation — almost a spoiling for a fight. Then something happens in the environment that triggers the emotion. But the anger exists as an underlying predisposition or habit.

Desire and ignorance (a habit or tendency of avoiding confrontation, interaction or engagement) work the same way.

All of these emotions are very fixed and self-referential. The experience of the object of the emotion is very limited — the interest is solely in the object as it satisfies a preexisting want. There is no space to appreciate the nuances of the object — it is just consumed, destroyed or glossed over.

Hi Amod,
I did want to respond at length to your post because I followed the whole kerfuffle in real time as it developed, and I met Justin for the first time this past fall.

One thing that strikes me about your post is that it is possible that the instrumental benefits of living a circumscribed lifestyle like Justin is experimenting with in this class may help prevent ego depletion, assuming, of course, that this actually exists. This in turn, ironically enough in the case of Buddhism, may provide the necessary resources (ego repletion?) to sustain the effort to meditate or whatever else you might want to do. So not having to think about food (when you will eat it, what you will eat, where you will eat, a source of constant dialogue and negotiation between myself and my wife) frees up the self-control or willpower to shut up and sit and practice sadhana or whatever.

However, I’ve always been leery of using meditation and now ascetic practices in such an instrumental way. I think this is just a matter of taste, but I think my views on this are evolving, especially given the immense amount of distraction that is now present in my life. I’m starting to think that success in the future will depend on strict informational hygiene in order to stay on task, whatever that task may be, and that bodily disciplines that Justin assigned might be key to this.

There is an interview with him on youtube somewhere where he extols the benefits of mindfulness meditation. He was introduced to it at a leadership retreat, I believe, sometime in the past few years. It’s extremely odd, even for a Democrat. A Democrat who is a Catholic, I might add, a point that is slightly relevant to a hypothesis I want to put forth.

The other interesting thing I found about the whole debate, especially in the comments on Get Religion, was the accusation that Justin wasn’t a “real” monk. Now I may have misunderstood Justin over dinner and/or the interview he did recently about his new book, but it was my understanding that he lived for several years as a monk after he became fluent in Thai. Of course that wasn’t mentioned in the article, but that seems to qualify him as a real ex-monk at the very least.

Another point I wanted to mention and that I always highlight when I discuss the bio of the Buddha and the early monastics is the importance of comportment or deportment (odd that they are synonyms) as an indication that one has progressed towards or achieved Awakening. The story of the Buddha and Kauṇḍinya and the other four monks at Sarnath, at least how it’s told in some versions, indicates the force of the look of the Buddha after his Awakening, beyond, of course, the 32 laksanas and so on.

I always compare this to Sariputra’s encounter with Asvajit and then Maudgalyana’s subsequent encounter with Sariputra.

If clothes makes the man, then perhaps the manner makes the monk.

However, I believe the folks at Get Religion were really exercised over his claim to be a Buddhist and a Catholic, and I’d love to see him explain what he means by that. It might not necessarily be Christian parochialism, as you so aptly put it, but Protestant parochialism. Let me explore this a bit further.

Recently someone in Chinese Buddhism at the AAR this past November told me that his theory for men getting into the study of Asian religions depended on a significant interest in one or more of the following three things: 1) anime 2) Dungeons and Dragons 3) manga. I think this may be generational because I was a little too old for 1 & 3, but I did get in my share of 20-sided dice rolls in my day.

I told him that I thought that being raised a Catholic would be the fourth and perhaps most significant (being raised Jewish also might be a 5th), and the senior scholar we were having coffee with sheepishly admitted that he too had been raised Catholic.

Justin was present at the dinner the weekend I met him when I bet someone who isn’t in religious studies that all four men in Asian religious studies at that end of the table (it was near the end of the evening) were raised Catholic.

I knew two of us were because otherwise my confirmation would have been an odd thing to do and Justin will let you know pretty quick that he’s Irish and Catholic, especially over dinner and a drink or two. I was right that the other two (one from England and one from Germany) were as well. Even though that’s anecdotal, seemed like a pretty high percentage to me. Incidentally, I don’t think it works the same way for women. There must be a different formula.

All of this suggests to me that there is much more flexibility in regards to doctrine and practice to Catholicism (or for lapsed Catholics, which I intend to start a club for, the LCC, at some point) or at least to certain strands of it that would be impossible for most Protestants, who base their identity on either/or. I am reminded of the time I sat for a couple of months at the provocatively named Maria Kannon Zen Center founded by Ruben Habito, an ex-Jesuit, while I lived in Dallas. After all, as I remind my students when they want to compare the Dalai Lama to the Pope, even the Pope isn’t the Pope anymore in regards to absolute authority.

Thanks, Warner! A very interesting set of reflections. Re Protestantism and Catholicism, have you seen my reflections on single-mindedness? (No reference to ekagracitta intended, though a comparison could be interesting now that I think about it.) It’s not quite the same thing you’re saying here, but I think the parallels are strong.

The biographical reflections on Asian-religion scholarship are also intriguing. I was not raised remotely Jewish nor Catholic: my mother grew up in a mix of Protestantism and atheism, and my father was raised Hindu but by the time I was born he was a Marxist. So I don’t fit any of those categories; and my father’s upbringing had basically nothing to do with my entering this field of study, since he’d rejected most of it and if anything I tended to like it even less than he did.

On the other hand… I have rolled my fair share of 20-sided dice; I continue to do so, and more. Skholiast, a regular commenter here, has spoken regularly on his blog about his love for Tolkien and other fantasy settings. And I’m curious as to why your friend might have regarded that as a precursor to an interest in Asian religions. Anime and manga leading to Japanese studies are obvious, but why a game based on European mythology and fantasy? I presume it’s something more than the basic point that D&D and humanities scholarship both tend to attract people who are smart, creative, and socially maladjusted?

Plenty more to chew on in your post, but I’ll leave it there for a start.

MR: “The energy that is released is channelled into positive cultural achievements.”

This notion that suppression of appetites helps creative achievement is a myth. How many of the great artists, engineers, and scientists were practitioners of monastic or ascetic regulations such as celibacy?

And how many monastics or ascetics are represented in the pantheon of great creators?

Celibacy is a necessary condition of monasticism. Right? But how on earth do we know for certain that someone is practicing celibacy?

Consider, in this context, the fact that onanism has always been the bane of monasticism! LOL

On Monkhood as a technique for cultivating “hyperawareness” of oneself:

How is this “hyperawareness” of oneself different from hyper or excessive preoccupation with oneself, with one’s sensations, thoughts, feelings, desires, actions, “sins”, or “falls”, or “pitfalls”, etc?

And why isn’t such “hyperawareness” or excessive preoccupation with oneself actually an extreme form of narcissism?

I seriously doubt the wisdom of any practice which leads to such excessive preoccupation with one’s own appetites and with winning or losing solo games of will-power over those appetites.

It is, I think, bound to lead to serious deficiencies in understanding and dealing with the external world and other people. (“Hyperawareness of oneself and others” seems like a very tall order to me! As Clint Eastwood put it in a movie, “A man has got to know his limitations!”)

Thill:
Considering all the ‘fasting and abstinence’ that you must have done to get your Phd. (assuming you didn’t get it in the post) I am amazed that you do not accept that our energies cannot be splurged hither and yon without damage to the hierarchy of our ambitions. Great artists, scholars, scientists are very frequently individuals that put in the time at mastery of their vocation. To the extent that they get distracted into the realms of wine, women and song in an immoderate way they fail to achieve their potential. Native talent is not enough. You may entirely be at odds with the aims of religion but how can you deny that their practise makes sense? I think it’s always a mistake to think that those that you disagree with are wrong about everything, the American disease. The discarding of comforting simplisms frees up energy.

Sorry to disappoint you, MR, but no fasting or abstinence was involved in completing the requirements for my Ph.D.

Obviously, anyone who takes up a task needs to focus on it to do it well. Acetic or monastic mystification in terms of spooky “energies” is unnecessary.

Again, how many of the (alleged) celibates have exhibited artistic or other forms of creative excellence?

And how many of the great geniuses and creators practiced celibacy?

That Raphael or Picasso showed immense concentration while working on their paintings does not entail by any stretch of logic or imagination that they practiced celibacy or even if they did, that they owed their powers of concentration to celibacy.

A cursory look at biographical material on both of these artists should show how far removed they were from celibacy or any monastic regulation.

Thill:
I deliberately set the bar low for you; fasting and abstainence is not not the same as celibacy. In any case no one is proposing that the students who are keen to get on this course take a vow of any kind merely a purely voluntary abstainence for a limited period. Is the usefullness of this minor asceticism denied because of reservations about the much greater demands of strict monkhood? Surely not.

I agree that a stint with an ascetic practice or two may well be helpful for those, particularly youth, enmired in contemporary North American style narcissism, provided, of course, it doesn’t deepen that narcissism in a new and fanciful “spiritual” form.

My target, however, are the tall claims made on behalf of monasticism or asceticism as a way of life or long-term practice. That discourse, I think, is rife with falsehood and false cause fallacies.

Again, Tolstoy’s masterpiece “Father Sergius” is worth reading and reflecting on in this context.

“As part of the class, students are required to live for various periods of time according to various restrictions, each one followed by an actual monastic order of some tradition or other.”

Required? This goes beyond the bounds of the objectives of a non-religious, publicly-funded, university or college. I certainly would consider it a serious infringement or violation of my rights as a student if an instructor tells me that in order to pass the class I am “required” to live in a certain way or follow obsolete precepts!

I hope the “practicum” in McDaniel’s course is not a “requirement” for passing the course. And I also hope that the course itself is not a “requirement” for completion of any program.

The slippery slope in allowing these sorts of courses should be clear.

Religious conservatives, particularly in this country, can and will exploit this opportunity to the fullest for offering and promoting courses with a required “practicum” in “Christian living” inexorably inclusive, obviously, of “abstinence”.

I am also curious, my objections to the very idea of this sort of monastic “practicum” in a university or college course notwithstanding, about how “assessment” works for this course and its “practicum”.

The last thing I would want is to turn the university or college into a breeding ground for advocacy of what is actually a truncated religious agenda.

I would raise the same objection to courses on “meditation”. A university or college course should be an impartial, objective inquiry into traditions of meditation, their “assumptions”, the evidence for (tall) claims made on behalf of meditative practices, investigation of whether meditation can actually be harmful (in the wake of new studies on the harmful effects of some yogasanas or yoga positions, e.g., “the headstand”) etc.

Students should in no way be “required” to practice meditation as part of such courses. Any “practicum” must be optional.

If we allow it for meditation, we are also “required” to allow it for prayer, faith healing, voodoo rituals, and so forth!

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